


Midwinter Homecoming

by Lil_Redhead



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: CS kids, Christmas, F/M, daddy killian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 10:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13165032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lil_Redhead/pseuds/Lil_Redhead
Summary: Cressida Jones loves spending Christmas with her family. When her father admits that Christmas isn’t really his favorite holiday, Cressie does everything she can to make sure that her dad has the best Christmas ever.





	Midwinter Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inaccessible Rail (strangetales)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetales/gifts).



Cressie Jones was meticulous in everything she did, but if there was one skill she hadn’t mastered in her ten years of life, it was patience. The young girl had plans, and she would see them through even if she had to battle ten dragons to have her way. Sometimes her parents were just as frustrating, but at least they were more willing to compromise. In Cressie’s experience, dragons were even more impatient than she was, and she hadn’t found the right fireproof clothes to confront them about it yet.

She also fancied herself to be fairly self-reliant, just like her mom. If her plans worked out the way she expected they would, she would grow up to be just like Emma Swan, best mom in the world and super-awesome Savior of Storybrooke. At the very least, Cressie wanted a cool, lengthy title for herself. What good was having a pirate captain as a dad if he couldn’t even give her a cool name? She liked “Cressida Jones, Terror of the Atlantic”, but she also didn’t want to scare away all the kids at school, so maybe she could settle for “Cressida Jones,  _Protector_  of the Atlantic”. She did belong to a family of heroes, after all.

A family of heroes that she couldn’t  _wait_  to have over at her big house for the holidays! Christmas Eve dinner was a big deal at the Swan-Jones-Mills-Nolan household, where Grandma would come over with way more food than they could possibly eat, and Regina would bring her famous apple pie, and it would take half the night to convince everyone it wasn’t poisoned. Plus, Henry was coming back from college and that meant that Cressie could finally kick his butt in a good ‘ol game of cards. Their mom always pulled out these sugared apple scented candles that she’d light with a swoop of her hand. It was Cressie’s job to pick out the music, a task she mastered over the years. No one could create a Spotify playlist quite like she could, because no matter how far they were in the evening, the music  _always_  matched the mood. By the time everyone left, Cressie’s heart always felt so full she could burst, and they’d cap the night off by watching Santa Claus is Coming to Town. The next morning she’d wake up to the smell of Grandpa’s pancakes and scurry down the massive staircase to find that Santa really had come. It was perfect.

That’s why Christmas was her favorite holiday. And mom’s, and Henry’s!

But what about dad’s? Had anyone ever even  _asked_  him if he even liked Christmas?

“You alright there, duck?” her mom asked. Cressie broke out of her daze, glanced down at the cookie in her hands, and groaned. She must have zoned out to another realm, because the cookie she was supposed to be icing was covered front and back in sticky, sweet pastel frosting. It looked like the Grinch with its chunks of green frosting practically dripping off of the drowning cookie. Not only that, but she somehow had managed to get it all over her hands and shirt, too. There was no way she could present this atrocity to her family tomorrow. The only thing to do was take one for the team. Desperate times called for desperate measures. She’d have to eat the monster cookie herself.

Shoving the cookie into her mouth, Cressie mumbled, “I’m a nutcase.”

“Come on, Cress, you can do better than that. You gotta go for something more season appropriate,” Henry said, his pristinely decorated cookies spread out around him. “How about a nutcracker?”

“How does that even make sense?” Cressie scoffed, wiping the frosting from her lips.

“I wouldn’t worry about her being a nutcracker until she starts saving damsels in distress from manlike rat soldiers.” Cressie spun around to see her father in the doorway kicking off his boots. He smiled at the scene of his family covered in sprinkles and frosting, and padded over to see their handiwork.

Cressie jumped off of her stool and barrelled into her dad’s arms. She didn’t even have to ask where he’d been, the scent of sea salt still lilting off of his leather jacket. In her dad’s arms was one of the safest places to be. The other place, was of course, her mom’s arms. He pressed his lips to the top of her dark hair, then leaned over a bit to kiss his wife.

“Hello my loves,” he greeted, peeling Cressie off of him. “Smells heavenly in here. Did you make any for me?”

“Only if you plan on icing them yourself,” Henry warned, shielding his creations from his step-dad’s grabby hook. Cressie watched as her dad rolled his eyes, but his mock annoyance soon melted into a cocky smirk.

“I hope you have prepared yourself to be definitively shone up by your own step-father, lad. I’ve quite honed my cookie icing skills over the last few years.” He winked over at Cressie. “That is, with the help of my talented daughter.”

“I don’t care how much you guys compete against each other, as long as I can put out semi-presentable sugar cookies for my family tomorrow,” Cressie’s mom said, sliding a few bare cookies across the table to her husband. “Less provoking, more icing, please.”

Cressie jumped right back into work, going about her creation with a renewed sense of focus and heightened attention to perfection and detail. Henry would not be the sibling getting the compliments for his cookies this year. She’d help make this Christmas way more perfect than last Christmas, and the Christmases before it too.

All her focus flew out the window and into the mounds of snow outside when she remembered what had been bothering her earlier.

“Daddy,” Cressie called out. He looked up, curious as to why she was interrupting him halfway through his story about his day at work.

“Yes, darling?”

“Is Christmas your favorite holiday?” she asked very seriously. After all, this Christmas’ perfection was mounting on his answer to this simple question. If her dad was the odd one out, she’d have to  _make_  him like Christmas just as much as the rest of them. Otherwise, he’d be left out!

“I love Christmas,” he answered carefully. “It’s one of the few times during the year that the entire family can put everything on hold and come together for a few days.”

“But is it your  _favorite_?”

Cressie waited in anticipation as her dad considered his answer.

“No, but it’s a close second.” Cressie’s jaw dropped. She dropped the icing covered butter knife in her hands and slammed her hands on the table.

“What could possibly be better than Christmas?!” she exclaimed. Was it Valentine’s Day, because he always insisted on doting on his wife? Or was it Thanksgiving because of all the food? She wouldn’t even entertain the idea of it being something  _ridiculous_  like…like… _Groundhog Day_.

“Well, there was a holiday in the Enchanted Forest that used to happen around this time of year. We called it the ‘Midwinter Homecoming.’ It was one of the few holidays that lasted the test of time. I celebrated it with my brother hundreds of years ago, and it’s still celebrated today, I imagine.”

Cressie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She shoved her cookies over to her brother, and then sprinted off toward her room.

“Cressida, where you going?” her mom called, but Cressie didn’t answer.

She had two days to figure out how to make Christmas her dad’s favorite holiday, and time was already ticking.

*

It was hopeless. This was new levels of desperate, useless, completely and utterly impossible. Cressie wasn’t Cindy Lou Who. She had no idea how to make Christmas better than it already was. Her Google search history was littered with questions like, “How do I make my dad like Christmas most?” and “What the heck even is a Midwinter Homecoming?” and “Is a Midwinter Homecoming really better than Christmas, or is that just fake news?”

She was neck deep in her research when Henry peered over at the screen, resting his chin on her shoulder.

“Why are you so worked up about this?” he asked, then he shifted so he was half sitting on her computer desk. “You do realize that not everyone celebrates Christmas, right? Some people celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, and there’s even more than that. That’s why we sometimes say Happy Holidays. Because there’s more than just one.”

“But  _we_  celebrate Christmas. I want him to like it just as much as we do.”

Henry thought this over for a few seconds. Then, a smile spread on his lips, the same one that he got whenever he had a clever idea. He leaned in close, and Cressie practically vibrated with the need to know his idea.

“You want to know what’s better than celebrating one holiday?”

“Yes,” she hastened. Henry paused for dramatic effect, and Cressie resisted the urge to strangle him.

“Celebrating two.”

*

Cressie Jones was meticulous in everything she did, and there was  _a lot_  to do. In between wrapping presents for her family, finishing up hanging candy canes on the tree, and of course, picking out the perfect christmas CD, she also had to find time to sneak off to the library. Having the librarian as an aunt certainly didn’t hurt, either. All it took was one (half begging) phone call to auntie Belle, and suddenly she had an appointment to do all the research she wanted.

Snowed in at the library, Cressie surrounded herself with piles of old texts. The stale smell of the pages seeped into her clothes and hair, and a thin layer of dust settled on her like a musty blanket. She didn’t mind, though. Her focus was fixed on the smudged words within the books, lengthy and difficult to understand. It didn’t help that her father’s favorite holiday appeared to be a rare one, and the only hint she could find was that it seemed to be a sailor’s holiday. Feeling defeated, Cressie dumped a bunch of books on the circulation desk and slammed her forehead on the top of the pile. This was hopeless.

“Why don’t you look in some of the old journals in the archives?” Belle suggested. “I think there’s some written by sailors?”

“There are  _journals_  in the archives?” Cressie exclaimed. That was it! Sailors were known to be just as thorough as she was. She knew that for a fact because, well, she lived with one. A sailor’s precision was where her own meticulous nature originated from. By the end of her library visit, she’d read half a dozen journals and  _finally_  found what she was looking for.

Now, all that was left was to get mom’s help.

Cressie found her mom wrapped in a scarlet towel in her bathroom. She was halfway through combing her damp hair when Cressie burst in, notepad and pen in hand. Her mom startled at the sight of her, and then gave a half annoyed glare.

“I know we taught you how to knock,” she chided, turning her attention back to the mirror.

“This is an  _emergency_.”

“An actual emergency or a Christmas emergency?”

“A Christmas emergency  _is_  an actual emergency, Mom!”

“Of course,” Emma said, a hint of sarcasm reaching her voice. She dropped the comb on the counter and moved into her bedroom with Cressie scurrying behind her. A slight trace of Emma’s floral shampoo reached Cressie’s nose as she walked by, and Cressie made a mental note to sneak in and steal some for herself one day.

“Momma, it’s just that - hey, are you actually listening? - Christmas is tomorrow and all the stores are already closed, but I finally figured out what I needed in order to make Dad’s christmas perfect!”

“How? Did you ask him?” Emma asked, sliding into some red flannel pajamas.

“Well, no, but I went to the library and read some journals by a bunch of sailors! Dad’s favorite holiday is a sailor’s holiday! It’s when the men out at sea would come back to shore when the waters were too icy to sail on, and they’d drink and eat stew with bar maidens!”

Emma’s head spun to look at her ten-year-old, an incredulous look in her eyes.

“So you want me to…what, invite bar maidens to Christmas dinner tomorrow?”

“No mom, dad’s married, remember? I made a list of the must-haves that the sailors mentioned. You know, stuff that came up more than once. I was wondering if you’d help track them down.” When her mom looked like she might protest, Cressie bounced on her toes, “Please mom, Dad’s perfect Christmas is at stake!”

“Alright, alright, what do you have on your list.”

Cressie jolted, bringing her note pad up to her face and looking down at what she’d written at the library. She scrunched her nose. Her handwriting in the dark archives was horrible, and it was a good thing she knew what she was looking for already.

“Well, I was thinking we could merge Christmas and Midwinters Homecoming together, so there’s only a few things I’d need. The sailors used to hang candles in the trees, but I figured it might be easier to use some of the spare string lights we have in the attic. We could hang them tree to tree, so they wouldn’t look like Christmas trees too much.”

“Okay, those we have. Keep going.”

“Well they drank, a lot, but I was thinking we could make hot chocolate to keep us warm, and you and dad could put rum in yours like you always do.”

“Not  _always_.”

“And there’s dancing, of course. I’ll sacrifice myself and stand in the stead of the bar maidens. Don’t worry, I already picked out the music.”

“Please don’t go around telling people you’re a bar maiden, alright?”

“And last of all there’s supposed a big bonfire that you make stew over. But we can just make soup in the house and bring it outside in mugs or bowls or something.”

“Is that all?”  

Cressie pursed her lips.

“Well, no, but the rest of it isn’t exactly family appropriate.” Emma frowned and waved her hand.

“I don’t want to know.” She paused. “That all sounds like stuff we could do.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure, why not? I think your dad will appreciate that you went to all the trouble.”

Cressie jumped up, hugging her notebook to her chest. Then, she remembered that this was a serious matter, turned to her mother, gave a stern nod, and sprinted off to the attic to find the spare fairy lights.

Of course, when she was out of sight, she did her favorite victory dance. Fist pumps and all!

Ah, she loved it when things fell into place!

*

Christmas morning was so much fun, she almost forgot about Midwinter Homecoming. Almost. Santa had come directly on schedule, and had paid special attention to Cressie’s presents. Grandpa’s pancakes were way better than normal, because he let her put chocolate chips in the batter  _and_  on top. Plus christmas tree sprinkles! And Grandma bought her the boots she’d been ogling at a few weeks ago.

“Now you can look like your mom!” Cressie could not have been more thrilled.

She could still remember the anticipation she felt as her brother carefully tore into the present she got him, a new leather journal for his new passion of poetry.

“Thanks duck,” Henry said with a smile. He scooped her up into his arms and peppered kisses into her hair. “You’re not half bad sometimes.” Cressie shirked herself from her brothers arms, and scurried over to her new boots, anxious to see if she really would look like her mom with them on.

“Cressie, come here,” Killian called. She hurried and zipped the boots up along the sides, then plopped next to her dad. “I have something for you.”

“What is it?” she said, awed eyes looking at the flawless wrap job of the long, narrow box placed in her lap.

“Why don’t you open it and see?” So she did. Unlike her other presents, which she tore apart with anxious fingers, she carefully removed the tape from the package and pulled the box from the glossy, snow colored paper. Biting her lip, she lifted off the lid of the cardboard box, and gasped.

“It’s a spyglass,” she mumbled to herself. It wasn’t much unlike her dad’s, but it reflected a radiant golden sheen, and didn’t have two hundred years worth of stains and scratches on it.

“I wanted to get you a small knife for your new boots, but your mom wouldn’t let me, so I chose this instead. This way, whenever you look for me, you’ll always be able to see and find me.”

“I can be a pirate hero just like you!” she realized, meeting his eyes with excitement.

“Aye, that you can.”

And it was at that particular moment that she realized she had some last minute Midwinter Homecoming preparations to complete. When her face dropped into horror, Killian startled.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I almost forgot the most important present of all! I’m a total nut!” She hopped off the couch, yanked her checklist from one of the nearby drawers, and practically sprinted toward the back door. She was nearly out of sight when she yelled, “Don’t look at the backyard!”

“Don’t hurt yourself out there, Miss Nutcracker,” Henry called as the door slammed shut.

*

She counted down from five, took a deep breath, and removed her hands from her dad’s eyes. This was it.

“So…What do you think?” Cressie asked.

Killian took a few steps forward, standing at the edge of the back patio. He leaned over the railing and looked at the lights hung in the trees. The ginormous bonfire burned tall and bright, and at a safe distance, Cressie had set up the crockpot of Grandma’s chicken stew and three big thermoses of hot chocolate.

“Dad?” Cressie asked again. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Is this…” He trailed off, looking from his daughter back to the scene before them. “Is this Midwinter Homecoming?”

“Am I in trouble if it is?” Cressie looked back at her mom, who gave her a look that said _Be patient_. Then Killian spun around, eyes glossy.

“Cressida, you did this?”

“Dad, I gotta tell you, you’re being a little vague right now. Do you like it?”

Then, like he flicked a switch, a grin split his face. He barreled forward, yanking her up into his arms and spun her around. Cressie squealed, dizzy from the excitement.

“I take that as a yes?”

“I love it! How did you even know to do all this?” He shook his head. “Nevermind, if anyone could figure it out, it’s you.” Cressie looked down at her toes, and Killian pushed some stray hairs out of her eyes.

“I know it’s not exactly perfect. I didn’t wanna try to put candles in the trees, because that’s a fire hazard. And I can’t buy alcohol, so I made hot chocolate instead of rum. Grandma brought some stew. It’s over there.” She paused, thinking back to see if she remembered everything.  “Oh! Also, it’d be inappropriate to bring bar maidens to Christmas dinner, so mom and I will be the maidens you can dance with.”

“No, Cressie darling, it is perfect,” he told her seriously. “Although, you did not have to go to all of this trouble just for me!”

“Everyone should get to celebrate their favorite holiday, no matter where they live. Henry said that celebrating two holidays is better than celebrating one, so that’s why we’re doing  _both_ Christmas and Midwinter Homecoming.”

“And we can do this every year if you want,” Emma added, coming up behind them. “Make it our new tradition.”

“I just wanted to make Christmas perfect for you,” Cressie finished in a quiet voice. Killian took her face in his hand and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“What did I do to deserve such wonderful girls?” he said, glancing from his daughter to his wife. “Cressida, you really are like your mother. I’ve yet to see you fail.”  

*

Later that night, Cressie sat in between her parents. The mug of hot chocolate in her hands warming them from the wintery chill. She could still taste the cinnamon chocolate aftertaste on her tongue, and sipped more with a smile.

“What’s got you grinning over there?” Henry asked from across the bonfire. Cressie shrugged happily. She looked at her grandparents leaning against one another, Henry and his mom sharing the same rum spiked hot chocolate, to her parents on either side of her.

This truly was the perfect Christmas, and if she wanted to outdo herself next year, she’d have to start planning tomorrow.

She couldn’t wait!

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, pop over and chat with me on tumblr under @the-reason-to-sail-home!


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